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mind?”
     
    — Shakespeare: The
Merchant of Venice
    4
     
    He stood gazing up at the colossal red granite Horus looming six cubits over him.
Nordhausen had seen this before in photographs. The god was 5000 years old
already and would live forever. The building housing him was barely one hundred
years old, and would one day be dismantled or fall into ruins, but Horus would
remain. These islanders were wrangling rudely shaped megaliths into circles
when Horus was sculpted 2181 miles away, the distance of the hypotenuse of the
1500 mile square, Sacred Jerusalem with Gizeh at one corner and London at the other. He was as
perfect, smooth, curved, beaked and taloned, as he had been in Karnak . He had last been worshipped in
the desert 1500 years ago, by an Ethiopian who had made a pilgrimage.
    In ancient times, the Egyptians
had seeded the earth with gods, and slowly, slowly, they were dispersing
throughout the world. Perhaps someday, when the right obelisk was installed in
the right cosmic vortex, who knew what long planned harmonic convergence might
ensue?
    The professor smiled to himself,
pleased that he was finally busied with the real work of his time jaunt. The
revelry of the previous night was still shrouding over him like a hangover, but
what was done, was done. He was here and there was nothing else to do but make
the most of things with the time that remained to him. He had dropped off his
formal wear this morning at Madame Tussaud’s on King Street , redeemed his deposit, had a spot of breakfast at a street café,
and now he was here—at the British Museum .
    Nordhausen’s musings were
interrupted by the arrival of a governess and a small girl, very well dressed
in deep blue velvet and black satin, eleven or twelve years old. The governess
was paging through a guidebook, while the little girl solemnly looked up at the
huge raptor, perching still and tense.
    “This is a pagan god of the Egyptians,
dear. It was captured from Boney, and brought to our island.”
    “I wonder what it means,” the
girl said, and ran her hands over a column of deeply incised hieroglyphics.”
    “No one knows, dear, it is all a
great mystery. It says here that the last people to use hieroglyphics died
almost eighteen hundred years ago.”
    Nordhausen was somewhat
surprised by the woman’s remark.  He knew he should keep his mouth tightly
closed, but what harm could come from a little pleasant conversation? “Why, not
at all,” he said. “This is the god Horus in the form of a falcon. See, here is
the name of the pharaoh Rameses, who built this statue.” He pointed to the
royal cartouche, and spelled out, “Ra-me-ses. This circle with the dot is Ra,
the sun god. This funny knot is the symbol ‘mose’, which means ‘to give birth,’
so it stands for ‘M’, and these two hooks are S’s.”
    The girl put her fingers on the
hieroglyphics, and slowly traced, “Ra-me-ses.”
    “Oh, sir,” interrupted the
governess, “How is it possible that you would know all this? It’s an evil
looking thing, that much I’ll give you. Has an unholy look about it, yes?”
    “Unholy? I dare say, Madame.
There is nothing holy about it. In fact, the Egyptians were quite fond of human
sacrifice at one point, and I suppose this monument here has seen its fair
share of blood through the ages.”
    “My word! To speak of such
things before an innocent child! Don’t touch, Marie! Come along now.” She
grabbed the girl firmly by the arm, and hurried her out of the gallery, leaving
little more than a frown in her wake.
    Well I’ve done it again, thought
Nordhausen as he mentally kicked himself. Suppose they were going to take the
whole tour of the museum and I’ve gone and spoiled it all for them. Suppose the
little girl was to find some glowing inspiration here that sticks in her mind
and feeds the fires of her imagination—and now I’ve gone and put them out. Damn
it man, when will you learn to keep your bloody mouth shut?
    Angry at himself